


Just a little late

by ferggirl



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:43:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferggirl/pseuds/ferggirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tag to Human Trials, referencing the (violent) end of that episode. </p>
<p>Clarke doesn’t feel anything for most of the next two days.</p>
<p>Once the shock wears off, she and Octavia do what they can for the wounded, but there are so many bullets sprayed across the village. With each one Clarke digs out of a shoulder, or a leg, it plays over in her head. </p>
<p>"I found you."</p>
<p>She finds herself apologizing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just a little late

Clarke doesn’t feel anything for most of the next two days.

Once the shock wears off, she and Octavia do what they can for the wounded, but there are so many bullets sprayed across the village. With each one Clarke digs out of a shoulder, or a leg, it plays over in her head. 

_I found you._

She finds herself apologizing. 

"I’m sorry." I’m sorry you’re hurting. I’m sorry he did this. I’m sorry he thought I would ever want this from him. 

Over and over until Octavia reaches over and closes her bloody fingers around her wrist. She shakes her head and Clarke bites her tongue after that.

While she’s doing what she can for the living, Bellamy and Murphy help to bury the dead. It’s sundown by the time they come back to camp, dirty and quiet. Bellamy’s eyes seek them out, sitting by the fire as the villagers hurry to their friends and family, with hugs and tears and tales of the burial ceremonies. 

Octavia knows the man - the leader of the village, since all the warriors are gone. He gives them a place to sleep for the night, and sends everyone else to bed. Finn is gagged and tied in the bloodstained paddock. His pupils are blown out, and he looks almost childish and lost. 

Clarke’s hands shake as she picks up a blanket - the night is cold and it’s  _Finn_ , isn’t it? 

She can’t answer her own question, and her feet stay rooted to the dirt floor. Bellamy comes over after a moment, and she feels him take in her struggle. Then he plucks the blanket from her hands and mutters, “Go to sleep, Clarke.”

When he comes back, he sits down beside her on his loaned blanket. His eyes are shuttered. Octavia rolls over to look at them, glances at Murphy, curled up in a corner. 

"What are we going to do?"

Clarke doesn’t have an answer. Neither does Bellamy. Even Murphy is quiet for once. 

In the heavy silence, the muffled sound of sobs drifts through the cracks in the door, and Clarke shudders. 

_I found you_.

The joy in his voice haunts her as much as the blood on her hands. If they had only come a few minutes sooner…

Octavia blows out the candle and they all lie there, not sleeping, until the sun rises. 

******

In the morning the village is empty. 

There are a pile of coats stacked in the paddock beside Finn, who is sleeping soundly. Clarke recognizes them as the ones the 100 were wearing when they were taken by Mount Weather. 

Everything else has been cleared out silently in the night. 

She tells herself that she’s relieved. That they didn’t know if the villagers would demand some Grounder type of justice.

But there’s a knot the size of a fist in her stomach when she looks at Finn. 

"Probably wanted to make sure they didn’t incite any more violence from the Sky People," Octavia said quietly. 

Bellamy nods. His face is as grim as Clarke has seen it. “So we take him back.”

"I just want to be very clear," Murphy says from behind them, "that I did not participate in this."

Bellamy turns to look at him. “You think I would have let you in that cabin if there was any doubt of that?”

"Just saying." He doesn’t have a witty comeback. His sly menace feels significantly less intimidating to Clarke in this cold morning light, as the mad boy she’d loved sleeps where seven people died at his hand.

Bellamy is watching her, she can feel it. So she straightens her shoulders and looks at him. “We should go.”

He stares at her for a minute, then says, “The gag stays in. Hands stay tied. I’ll walk him back.”

His worries at the fire had seemed so easy to dismiss. But Clarke can see the way his shoulders hunch as he slings the gun over his shoulder and bends down to shake Finn awake. 

Another thing they share, then. Guilt.

Finn is surprisingly docile, as long as he can see Clarke. She peels off from the group for a moment an hour in to pee, and when she gets back, Bellamy is sitting on him and Octavia has a gun trained at his head. 

He stills as soon as she’s visible.

"MMmmf mmm." 

_Found you._

She almost staggers at the sick feeling that hits her, but manages to nod at them and start walking. Octavia walks beside her, occasionally chatting about the weather or the path or the rations at the Ark camp. 

The three in the back are silent. 

They send Octavia to the gate with Murphy to fetch Abby and a few key security personnel. While she’s gone, Clarke paces and Finn and Bellamy watch her. 

She’s exhausted. And with the weariness is coming the waves of sensory memory. Hearing the gunshots, she’d thought they were too late.

She had feared for her friend. For Finn. That he was hurt. 

She’d never considered that he would hurt people in her name. 

"Clarke, sit down, you’re making me tired." Bellamy’s rough voice feels like a balm against the burn of her thoughts. He makes room on the log beside him and she sinks down. His hand covers hers, and they sit there in silence, waiting.

******

She doesn’t cry until later that night. First she has to explain it to Raven. It feels worse, almost, than being there herself. 

"Oh god," Raven says finally, after Octavia helps her sit down. "I told him - that’s what I said, you know. ‘Go find our friends.’"

_I found you._

Clarke chokes out assurances that it’s unrelated. That Raven could not have known. 

Then she flees the tent. Bellamy catches her halfway to the gate. 

"Clarke! Clarke,  _stop._ " His voice cuts through the dark, sharp and irritated, but the hand that closes around her arm is loose. Gentle even. "Stop and look at me."

It’s harder than it sounds. She has to breathe in and out four times before she can will her eyes up to his face. 

"This is not on you." His eyes are burning and there’s an urgency to his voice that she feels in her gut. "It’s not on you."

"How," her voice feels ripped from her lungs, tearing at her throat with every word, "how can you possibly say that."

_I found you._

"I gave him that gun," he says. "I let him walk away."

"To save a girl’s life!" And just like that the tears finally come. Slow at first. Just a hot trail down her cheek that draws his eyes. "You let him walk away because Monroe was shot, and the girl was hurt and - and -"

And then she can’t breathe anymore. The tears come faster but she can’t get air into her lungs. 

She’s on her knees before he realizes what’s wrong and crouches down beside her. 

"Hey, hey," he grabs her chin and makes her look up at him. "I need you to breathe, princess. In and out. Come on."

She just stares at him as her lungs burn. His eyebrows lower in concern and she glances back down at her fingers, seeing the tips of them turn blue. 

"What the hell, Clarke? Breathe!" She tries. She really does try. But all she can manage is a helpless shrug through the mess of tears and snot.

She’s not expecting him to swing her up into his arms. His legs are long, and they cover the ground to her mother’s quarters in a few strides, but the lights are dark and the room is empty. 

Her head is spinning as he curses and reverses course. 

"Clarke, just, match my breathing, come on," he says, heading back to the tent where he left Octavia with Raven. "In. Out. Nice and slow."

She focuses on the rise and fall of his chest, and her breath slows enough that she can fill her lungs on a gasp. Then another. 

He’s reaching for the tent flap when when she manages enough air to wheeze at him, “No. Please. Not yet.”

He looks at her, one eyebrow raised to mask what she could almost call relief. “That’s a start.” 

"I just - I need air. Both literally and figuratively," she manages. His crooked grin is a little sad. 

"No more running?"

"I promise. Put me down."

He stops as requested and sets her on her feet. One hand smooths back some of her hair and she wonders how he knows that same motion her father used to do when she was unhappy. 

Then he steps back and clears his throat. “I’m just going to see if they need anything. You stay put. And breathe.”

Clarke’s weak eyeroll gets her another crooked almost-smile before he ducks into the tent. As the cloth flap falls behind him, she finds a seat in the dust just outside the little circle of light coming from the canvas dwelling. 

She can hear the sounds of the forest, faintly. Layered onto those are the noises of the guards and the soft electric hum of the fence. She lets herself lay back and stare up at the cloudless sky. 

The stars wink at her.

She’s still lying there when the tent flap opens and heavy footsteps make their way to her side. 

He lies down close enough that she can feel the heat his body is giving off, but not touching. They stare up into the sky for a long time before he says, “You know it wasn’t easier, then, just a different kind of hard.”

"A familiar one," she says. "We knew the rules up there."

He’s quiet for a while. Then his hand finds hers and he squeezes. “We make the rules down here. That’s better.”

_I found_   _you._

Her face is sticky with tears, and her throat still burns from the panic attack that made her hyperventilate. But she squeezes his hand back, and breathes. 

"Maybe one day it will be."


End file.
